It wasn’t long ago that music, to me, was beginning to feel like dirt under my fingernails – unattractive and mundane at best. Nothing spoke to me. Rock seemed as polluted as the Miami River and about as palatable as puke. In short, I became a walking, muttering cliche: the…
You never know. To some the circus is raw-sawdust, peanut-shell memories of great hilarity and pure awe. To others it is an inexcusable example of how animals are tortured and individuals humiliated for the sake of entertainment. That’s the subjective. Objectively, a circus is chaotic, three rings of activity, acrobats…
Marianne Flemming blew it. The nomadic Miami native had made a name for herself and her eclectic, category-defying (“Just don’t call it folk”) music in locales as diverse as the Bitter End in New York City, Le Tam Tam Club in Washington, D.C., the Video Cafe in London, England, and…
If mild-mannered Clark Kent had a hip, record-spinning counterpart, it would be Carlos Menendez. But while Kent played the fool in order to keep secret his other-worldly powers, Menendez plays it cool – ultra-cool – and utterly collected. But both, when they are called, perform miracles of a sort. One…
Imagine: a war to end all wars, today’s music stars pitted against yesterday’s. A battle to the death in the name of rock and roll. From the beginning, it’s a massacre. Ouch! Vanilla Ice drawn and quartered by Carl Perkins. Yikes! The Pet Shop Boys bayonetted by Eddie Cochran. Kerrunch!…
Used-record store trappings, the detritus of stacked vinyl counterpointed by glossy CD reissues, seems familiar stuff. There are a half-dozen recorded-music stores in town whose owners see something beyond financial profit in their trade. Once around this place, change seeps in, commonality disintegrates, information banks burst. The summum bonum of…
When you think about it, blues cruises are a natural. Blow a few sawbucks at the tables, get trashed on complimentary booze while you pour laundry money into the gaping, insatiable maws of the one-armed bandits, and then try to figure out if you’ve got enough change rattling around in…
From Blind Faith to Bell Biv DeVoe, the concept of musical supergroups has been a popular one. You blend several established recording artists into a group (preferably with their blessing), stir in plenty of hype, and then catalyze the potion with the prospect of megabucks. Sometimes you get inert gas,…
I blame Foreigner. Other bands may have done it before them, but Foreigner really pushed the envelope. With just one single, Foreigner changed the rules of how rock bands attain chart success, and simultaneously performed a lobotomy on one of our most basic emotions. The name of this aural A-bomb?…
I’m not only older than critic Suzan Colon, I’m bigger, and besides, I’m prepared to deal with any allegations of smarminess when I say that ballads rule. Sure, many are wet – sappy sales ploys filled with all the wit and imagination of a Coors can. Many are cloying junk…
After reading my account of the alcohol-stoked sexual high jinks, violence, and general depravity that Baker and I witnessed, and, in the grand tradition of those paragons of journalistic excellence and artistic integrity, Hunter Thompson and Geraldo Rivera, participated in during December’s SoFlo Rock Awards, my wife, Arleen, decided to…
So you wanna be a rock and roll star? Why be a slave to originality? Use this tried and true method and achieve rock stardom instantly! Do you ever watch those Art Institute of America commercials on MTV and think, Hey, I got enough brain cells to do that? Do…
In fictionland, the investigator from the medical examiner’s office might be Quincy and the cop, perhaps, Columbo. Then there’s the requisite nosy, bothersome “close friend” of the “victim.” But you can’t make up reality, where the M.E.’s office is up to its gills and the homicide cop is busy looking…
When it comes to music, words get in the way. It’s easy to understand why: Our reactions to music usually are visceral and instinctive, not logical and quantifiable. As a result, it’s all but impossible to make someone feel the same sensations by describing a sound as he would feel…
It may seem as though Iko-Iko has been playing at Tobacco Road since the venerable nightspot secured Miami liquor license #001 back in 1912, but the truth is they’ve only been there a decade or so. By the standards of Miami nightclub longevity (a system of measurement not unlike dog…
It was one of the most captivating and affecting songs released in 1991. It’s so profound Greil Marcus felt the need to discuss it in his new book Dead Elvis. It could have been the cut to launch the career of a band called the Odds. But “Wendy Under the…
The big guy was selling futon furniture and the little guy was a customer. They got to talking, the big guy said something about how the little guy looked like he was involved in music. Maybe it was the hair. “I’m a producer,” the little guy finally admitted. Yeah, right,…
The first time the Burning Flames performed in Miami, in March of 1990 at, naturally enough, the Cameo Theatre, they played for six hours. Wouldn’t stop. Each time the lilting, synthesized strains of “Workey Workey” sprung out of that soca-funk jam, you had to keep moving your feet. This Saturday…
If “The Will” isn’t one of the big hit records of 1992, there is no justice, and even if it is, there’s still no justice, but that’s another story. Right there in the first ten seconds of the new Nuclear Valdez album Dream Another Dream lies the clue, the key,…
Several times each week, Koleksyon Kazak gathers at the North Miami home of group leader Jean Sebon for rehearsal. People drift in and pick up instruments from a huge pile of congas, small drums, rattles, a big bamboo tube called a vaksin, an array of other percussion instruments. Some are…
It’s a pleasant surprise to be able to chat with Louis Lowy, who plays bass and writes most of the lyrics for local original rockers the Wait, and not have to undergo therapy afterward. By his own admission, Lowy’s lyrics are usually downers, about as far removed from dance-floor fare…
Seems like lately the only rhythm coming out of the Cameo Theatre, once home to music from around the globe, is the boom-boom-boom of Disco Inferno. This week that changes as the Cameo again pulses with world beats, courtesy of the Rhythm Foundation’s first Miami Rhythm Intensive. The four-day event…
